The theme for International Women’s Day in 2019 is #BalanceforBetter.

Happy International Women’s Day! The team would like to acknowledge that lists such as these invariably exclude more composers than they promote. However, we embrace the opportunity to reflect on the striking music featured by female-identifying composer in Making Waves playlists and the Making Conversation Podcast since our inception in 2015.  We continue to welcome all composers, but in particular encourage women and gender diverse composers to submit your recordings to the Making Waves curation pool at any time and as often as you like.

We’ve collected a few examples of some ways composers and musicians are working towards a “Balance for Better” in our musical communities. This list is something we’re going to be building on over time in a special  dedicated resource page on our website to commend the work of inclusive and forward thinking creatives (coming soon). If you have suggestions of continuing initiatives or forward thinking ensembles and organisations to add, please comment below or email us at makingwavesnewmusic@gmail.com.

• The outstanding work of the Institute for Composer Diversity via the Composer Diversity Database and USA focused orchestra season analysis.
• Closer to home, we acknowledge the ongoing work and research presented in 2018 at the The Gender Diversity in Music Making Conference at Monash University and look forward to the 2019 edition, The Gender Diversity in Music and Art Conference, at the University of Western Australia July 16-29, Perth. [Note the current call for presentation proposals, due 22 March 2019!]
• We look forward to ABC Classic FM’s Festival of Female Composers and the inaugural Women in Music Festival 2019 at RMIT in Melbourne.
• Also a shout-out to some of the resources mentioned last year, still excellent and relevant:
  • The Women in Sound Women on Sound reading list
  • Music Theory Examples By Women
  • GRID (Gender Research in Darmstadt) and Ashley Fure’s reflections in 2016.
  • Ian Whitney’s Australian Content in 2019, is now a beloved annual blogging tradition. Whitney crunches the numbers closer to home on Australian content programmed by the Major Performing Arts Organisations, including attention to gender representation.

And now, over 20 hours of musical works and podcast audio for you to discover and enjoy! Listen through in order today while you work, bookmark to return, click shuffle to be surprised or all of the above!

YOUTUBE

The ‘playlist’ button will bring up a track listing which you can use to skip back and forth between the works.  If you want to check out the playlist and works in more detail, there is a button at the bottom right of the picture taking you directly through to YouTube. Please be mindful that this is over an hour worth of video, and it will chew the data! If you were going to tune in on a mobile device without a large data allowance, please consider listening in over wi-fi instead.

Bandcamp

Click the play button to stream audio, or the album title, ‘buy’ and/or ‘share’ links to proceed through to the Bandcamp page listing full album and recording details.

VIMEO

Click on the videos above to view, share and like each video over at the Vimeo platform, and follow composers and channels.  You can also hear these videos together as a Vimeo Album.

Spotify

Click through to discover the album that tracks are from, or find more recordings from the composers and performers. Please note: Spotify requires and account to listen in – there is a free tier and a premium tier but you might need to create a login and password, or use your Facebook details.

SOUNDCLOUD

To find out more about a musical work, click on the track name in the playlist and then again on ‘view track’.

Making Conversation Podcast

Find out more about the many wonderful featured composers here.